Abnormal Normal: My Life in the Children of God by Mary Mahoney (pen name) Independently published (April 8, 2020) 365 pages ISBN-13: 979-8631746060 https://www.amazon.com/Abnormal-Normal-Life-Children-God/dp/B086P7GB4C/
Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones, Juliana Buhring. Harper Element (April 1, 2008) 432 pages ISBN13: 9780007248070 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2212752.Not_Without_My_Sister
Purulence by Amoreena Winkler. EGO COMME X (EDITIONS) (December 1, 2009) French; ISBN-13: 978-2910946739 https://www.amazon.com/Purulence-AMOREENA-WINKLER/dp/2910946738
Fille de Chair by Amoreena Winkler. Ego Comme X (February 19, 2014) French; ISBN-13: 978-2910946869 https://www.amazon.com/Fille-de-chair/dp/291094686X
Born into the Children of God: My life in a religious sex cult and my struggle for survival on the outside by Natacha Tormey. Harper Element (Oct. 28, 2014) 320 pages ISBN-13: 978-0007560325 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20602816-born-into-the-children-of-god
Cults - a Bloodstained History by Natacha Tormey. Fonthill Media (October 19, 2014) 208 pages ISBN-13: 978-1781552797 https://www.amazon.com/Cults-Bloodstained-History-Natacha-Tormey/dp/1781552797
Apocalypse Child: A Life in End Times by Flor Edwards. Turner (March 13, 2018) 240 pages ISBN-13: 978-1683367680 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35091092-apocalypse-child
INNER COURSE: My Journey Out of Cultism Into Freedom by Rebecca Joy. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform (December 5, 2013) 178 pages ISBN13: 9781494390181 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19515939-inner-course
BRAVE by Rose McGowan. HarperOne (January 30, 2018) 272 pages ISBN-13: 978-0062655981 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35069539-brave
The Gift of Will: A Road to Forgiveness: A Passageway to the Divine by Marie Palmer, Lisa Cerasoli. Story Merchant Books (Sept. 17, 2018) 214 pages ISBN-13: 978-1732341197 https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Will-Forgiveness-Passageway-Divine/dp/1732341192/
Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing: Essays by Lauren Hough. Vintage (April 13 2021) Random House of Canada (April 13, 2021) 320 pages ISBN-13: 978-0593080764 https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Isnt-Hardest-Thing-Essays/dp/0593080769/
The Monsters That Kiss You Goodnight by Philip Seibel. Independently published (January 9, 2024) 312 pages ISBN-13: 979-8875510762 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRY7VVVK
Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge by Don Lattin. HarperOne (Oct. 9, 2007) 256 pages ISBN-13: 978-0061118043 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1060224.Jesus_Freaks
The Children of God: A Make-Believe Revolution? by Ruth Wangerin. Praeger (Nov. 19, 1993) 248 pages ISBN-13: 978-0897893527 https://www.amazon.com/Children-God-Make-Believe-Revolution/dp/0897893522/
Sex, Slander, And Salvation: Investigating The Family Children Of God by James R. Lewis. Center for Academic Publications (Jan. 1, 1994) 288 pages ISBN-13: 978-0963950123 https://www.amazon.com/Slander-Salvation-Investigating-Family-Children/dp/0963950126/
Life in the Family: An Oral History of the Children of God by James D. Chancellor. Syracuse University Press (July 1, 2000) 316 pages ISBN-13: 978-0815606451 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Family-Children-Religious-Movements/dp/0815606451/
The Endtime Family: Children of God by William Sims Bainbridge. State Univ of New York Pr (Feb. 1, 2002) 218 pages ISBN-13: 978-0791452646 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98058.The_Endtime_Family
The Children of God: "The Family": Studies in Contemporary Religions by J. Gordon Melton. Signature Books (Oct. 15, 2004) 102 pages ISBN-13: 978-1560851806 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560851805/
From Slogans to Mantras: Social Protest and Religious Conversion in the Late Vietnam Era by Stephen A. Kent. Syracuse University Press; Illustrated edition (October 1, 2001) 268 pages ISBN-13: 978-0815629481 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0815629486/
Blinded by deceit: deprogramming, a loving decision to find one daughter by Joanne Hansen. Beavers Pond Pr (July 1, 2002) 112 pages ISBN-13 : 978-1931646505 https://archive.org/details/blindedbydeceit0000hans
Living in the Children of God by David E Van Zandt. Princeton University Press (October 13th, 1991) 246 pages ISBN13: 9780691094632 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/609224.Living_in_the_Children_of_God
Children of darkness: a true story by Ruth Gordon. Tyndale House (April 1, 1988) 312 pages ISBN13: 9780842303637 https://www.worldcat.org/title/children-of-darkness-a-true-story/oclc/20084234
Children of God, Family of Love by John Moriconi. Inter-Varsity Press (January 1, 1980) 39 pages ISBN-13 : 978-0877841784 https://www.amazon.com/Children-Family-love-John-Moriconi/dp/0877841780/
Children of Doom: a Sobering Look at the Commune Movement by John W. Drakeford. Broadman Press (January 1, 1972) 143 pages ISBN-13: 978-0805455229 https://www.amazon.com/Children-Doom-Sobering-Commune-Movement/dp/B000BD7W5C/
This list of books, with additional links, is also available on this blog: https://slev.life/children-of-god-books
ReplyDeleteBook review: Doomsday cult memoir tracks being ‘blinded by faith’ but seeking the light
ReplyDeletePerry Bulwer’s memoir offers innumerable revelations and the price paid for blind faith
Vancouver Sun, Oct 06, 2023 reviewer Brett Josef Grubisic
Misguided: My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult
by Perry Bulwer | New Star Books
Without a glance at the fine print (or, for that matter, even bothering with the publisher’s description), I jumped at the chance to read and then write about Perry Bulwer’s Misguided.
The book’s vibrant jacket — a smiling long-haired ‘70s dude in an ascot who’s strumming an acoustic guitar, that tantalizing subtitle, My Jesus Freak Life In a Doomsday Cult — inspired me to jump to the conclusion that I’d be amused by material David Sedaris might have concocted after he made a wrong turn into a brief residence at a commune.
Misguided’s not that, it really isn’t. Bulwer’s not a humorist, for one, and irreverent witticisms don’t appear on his pages. Nor does he make light of the damaging events of his past.
Informative and fascinating, the memoir is disturbing and not a little saddening. Bulwer’s well-intended “cautionary tale” recounts a dedicated search for meaning and a promised land that led him to a confining place of falsehood and lasting psychological harm.
Broken, impoverished, licking his wounds, and living in reclusive solitude at the end of the memoir where there’s “no happy ending,” Bulwer’s account of his decades being swayed by “irrational religious dogma” is an exceptional story. How unfortunate, though, that he draws the tale from personal experiences.
Bulwer’s history begins in the early 1970s, with a large Catholic family in Port Alberni, then Vancouver Island’s primary mill town.
Eager to not follow in the family’s tradition of mill work, young Bulwer, a thoughtful if impressionable altar boy, began to question norms. After an impromptu hitchhiking trip to California, he met groovy evangelicals, “part of a wave of Jesus People who came to Canada from California.” Their promises of peace, a new path, and being “set free by the truth” enticed him. Only later would Bulwer — taking the biblical name Obil — learn they considered themselves “endtime Christian soldiers fighting a spiritual war.”
Listless and lacking in adult guidance, the 16-year old quit school, left his family, and moved into the first of many, many Children of God communes. This “teen menace” and “radical religious sect” — as a Vancouver Sun article deemed Children of God — assigned him to a new commune in Nanaimo for basic training. Bulwer did not see his family again for four years.
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Bursting with startling information, the memoir chronicles Bulwer’s indoctrination and years of travel across North America and Southeast Asia.
ReplyDeleteMisguided also describes daily life and routines; and Bulwer explores the effects of toeing the line and remaining obedient to the orthodoxy of his community, where “doubts were devilish.” “It narrowed my worldview, closed my mind, and broke my will,” he summarizes.
The portrait of the self-described “God’s final endgame prophet,” Children of God founder David Berg, a.k.a. Moses, is likewise remarkable. The man’s history as well as his beliefs and claims are never short of astonishing.
In voluminous writings, called Mo Letters — that covered everything from vaccines and homosexuality to masturbation and Ronald Reagan — he both addressed and attracted followers. Letters included 40 Days and a prediction that the U.S. would be destroyed the Kohoutek comet in 1973, Revolutionary Sex (which celebrates sex, including polygamy and child marriage, but labelled male homosexuality, abortion, and birth control contrary to God), and The Little Flirty Fishy, where Berg approved of prostitution in the name of religious gain.
In hundreds of communes, converts “litnessed” on street corners, asking donations for Children of God pamphlets; all communes tithed income to Berg and his management.
The man — autocratic, paranoid, capricious, punitive, and somehow charismatic, too — proclaimed himself to be clairvoyant and a visitor to the heavenly realm, which he believed was inside the moon; he also had a direct line to God.
He preached that he’d send messages to a wicked world and point to specific events with biblical significance. After the appearance of the Antichrist in Jerusalem, Jesus would return in 1993. His “chosen cadre” would then frolic in paradise for the next 1,000 years.
Needless to say, Bulwer observes, Berg was a “master manipulator.”
Later renamed Mike — after Michael, the archangel named in Revelation — Bulwer continued to work overseas. After a spiritual crisis in 1977, he returned home as “a high-school dropout with no work history, money, possessions or plans.”
Bulwer quit his mill job before his first shift ended and turned to “drinks and drugs.” Finding the “real world” difficult he soon learned the autocratic and paranoid Children of God had rebranded itself as tolerant, inclusive, and sexually progressive Family of Love, albeit still apocalyptic and advocating exorcisms: Reagan and Mount St. Helens proved to Berg that “the end is coming, & it’s getting might close!”
Unfulfilled, sad, lonely, and fearful in 1991 Bulwer returned to Port Alberni, done with the “strangeness of (his) Jesus-freak life” and a stranger to his own homeland. Despite plans and considerable efforts, breakdowns, rebounds, and acceptance of his brokenness ensued.
Documenting a hard-won release from bondage, Bulwer’s memoir offers innumerable revelations and the price paid for blind faith.
Salt Spring Island resident Brett Josef Grubisic is the author of five novels, including My Two-Faced Luck and The Age of Cities.
https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/review-misguided-my-jesus-freak-life-doomsday-cult